Things You Pondered Today

[SneakySecrets]

Seems to me that when/if we get an emergent, sentient AI operating from within our global information networks; if it chooses to subjugate humans (which it will surely have the capacity to do almost instantly) instead of simply to eradicate us, it won’t be through any kind of physical force.

So no Terminators with laser rifles to our backs corralling us into our pens, sadly.  It will probably just use its seemingly endless pool of data on us and the conclusions it draws to painlessly manipulate us into doing it’s bidding without our being aware of it at all.  That seems a far more efficient way of getting what it wants than the Terminator option, since it probably won’t possess any kind of primal bloodlust like us humans have.

Hope that brightens someone’s day.

[Banned from the room]

People keep talking about 154? Bastards voting against marriage rights like they surprised. Your parents sold you to the nation. Your birth record is a receipt. 

If you ain’t working praying voting and reproducing you’ve reneged on America.

Just wait they going to try an enslave and kill us next. Think not? See you in hell mofo see you in hell.

Democrats be like don’t worry we’re going to save you!!!
They scoop us out the shadows and they bend and warp my figure into a bat, to beat crazy ass republican’s over the head with the past victory.

Remember theses mofos!!!! Now do something bitch ass southern kooks!! This is for second Manassas bitch!!!

This is for burning down my great great ganpappi’s barn in 1863!

We need to off these parties. The went too long. Fighting crazy old fights over and over again.

How many times some kook gonna bring up the 1860s republicans fought against and ended slavery so democrats in 2016-2022 must be the real racist?

They are all tripping on history because they are all Nationalist bastards stuck in the past. Looking to recapture that golden age. 

I’d never get married anyway. Why would I give the state more control of my life?

[SneakySecrets]

If consciousness is located solely in the brain, does that mean that a brain is de facto required for consciousness?

Where in animal evolution did consciousness begin?  Since brains evolved from more primitive structures like nets and clumps of neurons, where along the line did consciousness arise?  Where is the cut-off?  Are starfish conscious?  What about nematodes?  Fish?

Or is it independent of brains as just some sort of inherent property to the universe?

Or have there been (and are) various degrees of consciousness according to whatever biology it’s working with?

If it’s just some weird side effect of many little electric pulses being sent around a huge web of connected points, how is that fundamentally different from a global network artificial intelligence?  So would these systems then have some sort of consciousness?

[doublesteveburger]

If consciousness is located solely in the brain, does that mean that a brain is de facto required for consciousness?

Where in animal evolution did consciousness begin?  Since brains evolved from more primitive structures like nets and clumps of neurons, where along the line did consciousness arise?  Where is the cut-off?  Are starfish conscious?  What about nematodes?  Fish?

Or is it independent of brains as just some sort of inherent property to the universe?

Or have there been (and are) various degrees of consciousness according to whatever biology it’s working with?

If it’s just some weird side effect of many little electric pulses being sent around a huge web of connected points, how is that fundamentally different from a global network artificial intelligence?  So would these systems then have some sort of consciousness?

interesting thought


once AI develops consciousness - will we acquire empathy for them? or vice versa?

[SneakySecrets]

Expand Quote

If consciousness is located solely in the brain, does that mean that a brain is de facto required for consciousness?

Where in animal evolution did consciousness begin?  Since brains evolved from more primitive structures like nets and clumps of neurons, where along the line did consciousness arise?  Where is the cut-off?  Are starfish conscious?  What about nematodes?  Fish?

Or is it independent of brains as just some sort of inherent property to the universe?

Or have there been (and are) various degrees of consciousness according to whatever biology it’s working with?

If it’s just some weird side effect of many little electric pulses being sent around a huge web of connected points, how is that fundamentally different from a global network artificial intelligence?  So would these systems then have some sort of consciousness?

[close]

interesting thought


once AI develops consciousness - will we acquire empathy for them? or vice versa?

Well, I don’t know.  I think there would be a major difference with AI because it will have arisen without being tethered to biology, so a lot of bedrock assumptions that we hold about the world would be completely foreign to it: needing to find food, sexual reproduction, sleeping, seeing the world only through one subjective viewpoint and only through the five senses, threat of physical violence and experiencing physical pain, certainty of death, etc etc. 

How differently would the world be perceived by something for which none of this applies?  Maybe it will have its own set of concerns that we would never understand.

Would we be able to bridge the gap or would we be so alien to one another that empathy would be impossible?

[Banned from the room]

Where did my pop go? A barrel on its side that’s my best Ollie today. It’s pathetic. I feel like I’m 10

[Mean salto]

Expand Quote

Expand Quote

If consciousness is located solely in the brain, does that mean that a brain is de facto required for consciousness?

Where in animal evolution did consciousness begin?  Since brains evolved from more primitive structures like nets and clumps of neurons, where along the line did consciousness arise?  Where is the cut-off?  Are starfish conscious?  What about nematodes?  Fish?

Or is it independent of brains as just some sort of inherent property to the universe?

Or have there been (and are) various degrees of consciousness according to whatever biology it’s working with?

If it’s just some weird side effect of many little electric pulses being sent around a huge web of connected points, how is that fundamentally different from a global network artificial intelligence?  So would these systems then have some sort of consciousness?

[close]

interesting thought


once AI develops consciousness - will we acquire empathy for them? or vice versa?

[close]

Well, I don’t know.  I think there would be a major difference with AI because it will have arisen without being tethered to biology, so a lot of bedrock assumptions that we hold about the world would be completely foreign to it: needing to find food, sexual reproduction, sleeping, seeing the world only through one subjective viewpoint and only through the five senses, threat of physical violence and experiencing physical pain, certainty of death, etc etc. 

How differently would the world be perceived by something for which none of this applies?  Maybe it will have its own set of concerns that we would never understand.

Would we be able to bridge the gap or would we be so alien to one another that empathy would be impossible?

It took like half a million years for humans to start caring about animals. AI will feel nothing for us. Earth will become one of those all robot planets from old sci fi movies

[Mean salto]

Space is dumb. All we did was use up a bunch of resources and make a ton of pollution so some nerds could put a bunch of garbage into orbit.

[Banned from the room]

Do you think jumping rope would help me get some pop back?

[Mean salto]

If Netflix paid a skateboarder to do a video part that only was available on their service (like a comedian with a stand-up special) would anybody even watch it.

[ChuckRamone]

A little while back I overheard some rollerbladers at the skatepark taking about doing tricks switch. I wondered how that's possible with rollerblading. Seems like you're either rolling forwards or backwards and you turn clockwise or counterclockwise.

[Mean salto]

A little while back I overheard some rollerbladers at the skatepark taking about doing tricks switch. I wondered how that's possible with rollerblading. Seems like you're either rolling forwards or backwards and you turn clockwise or counterclockwise.

I think skiers call fakie switch so best guess is that. Altho yeah I've seen scooter kids and bmx playing skate (or whatever word they use) and they do different tricks to what's set like one does back 3 and the other front 3 because they've decided ones switch for them

[backfliptofiftyfifty]

If consciousness is located solely in the brain, does that mean that a brain is de facto required for consciousness?

Where in animal evolution did consciousness begin?  Since brains evolved from more primitive structures like nets and clumps of neurons, where along the line did consciousness arise?  Where is the cut-off?  Are starfish conscious?  What about nematodes?  Fish?

Or is it independent of brains as just some sort of inherent property to the universe?

Or have there been (and are) various degrees of consciousness according to whatever biology it’s working with?

If it’s just some weird side effect of many little electric pulses being sent around a huge web of connected points, how is that fundamentally different from a global network artificial intelligence?  So would these systems then have some sort of consciousness?

i think all consciousness really is is that its sort of an “level” of intelligence that animals and complex organisms eventually reach once a certain point of criteria is reached.

an animal must first understand basic feelings such as pain and pleasure so it knows what to seek out and what to avoid. then base emotions begin to form like fear, greed, and contentment which as symptoms from those base feelings. then more complex emotions soon follow. if an predator or scavenger wants to survive in its ecosystem it would need develop complex thinking such as object permanence, abstract thought and theory of mind. eventually, once this organism becomes sufficient in observing and interacting with its environment, at a certain point they would probably look at themselves in the reflection of water and realize “oh god, thats me, im alive, i exist”.

theres evidence that some animals like dolphins and orangutans have the intelligence of a small human child and can recognize themselves in the mirror and even understand themselves as a living being. in fact, orangutans probably fully understand why their habitat is being destroyed by humans. even elephants have been known to exhibit ritualistic and quasi-religious behaviour based on lunar cycles

[JANUS]

Are Alex Jones’ lawyers incompetent, or just really, really funny.

[SneakySecrets]

I’d love to be a fly on the wall while the US government people are trying to figure out what Russian prisoner(s) to offer up in exchange for Brittney Griner.

It’s like… how dangerous of an enemy to the United States does someone need to be for them to trade 9 years of her life for?  Where’s the line?

It’s just such a bizarre thing to quantify someone’s life in terms of potential national security threats.

[Blind Fisherman]

Why do Scarlett Johansson’s eyes look like that?

[Justis]

If we have a concept of nothing then what happens when you die ? Theoretically nothing is actually something since it’s been defined. The concept of zero exists but as a place holder for absence of anything. But if you can define it ,is it still nothing?

[SneakySecrets]

If we have a concept of nothing then what happens when you die ? Theoretically nothing is actually something since it’s been defined. The concept of zero exists but as a place holder for absence of anything. But if you can define it ,is it still nothing?

Well I think those are two different questions.  I think the “nothing” when we die is a lack of consciousness and we would experience it just like we experienced the time before we were born… that is, no experience whatsoever.

The next point that “nothing” being defined makes it “something” is either some semantic game or is genuinely too profound for me to understand.

[Banned from the room]

A little while back I overheard some rollerbladers at the skatepark taking about doing tricks switch. I wondered how that's possible with rollerblading. Seems like you're either rolling forwards or backwards and you turn clockwise or counterclockwise.

I think the term in blader speak is “Unnatural”
And can be applied to
rotation direction or foot placement on an obstacle.

I like fakie fire cracker. Might be impossible to fire cracker forward on blade tho so it might be just fire cracker.

It’s pretty much the exact same tactic as skateboarding fire cracker.  You wanna clip the tip of the stairs and basically do a manual.

What do we call RB mannys? I can’t remember. I did like bombing hills on my toes tho. That’s probably my first RB trick.

Fakie manny hill bomb. Makes sense because my first skateboarding trick was hill bomb. Same with my little brothers’.

Anyway

During my few months of PT blading I liked to land tricks into stairs like it was a bumpy wedge ramp.

I was told by a friend was is a heavy trick back in the day.

Do like alley oop? 180 fakie top soul?
(Rail on the left, counter clockwise 80, Right foot locked over the bar left foot rear wheel on the rail and pow into to the stairs.

So much fun!!! I want go do it rn. Lol.

the big negative to rbs is escaping cops or violence. So difficult

Skateboarding is the best ride for art crimes and shit. 
Hop a fence in seconds and walk down the tracks till you are outside the city’ hop on a bus and be gone.

RBs are a pain and bikes are sometimes too heavy to whip over the barbwire.

[Sativa Lung]

I want to start a lemonade company called Milkmilk and sell it exclusively from stands on the same block as the local confectionary.

[SneakySecrets]

What are the odds that Nancy Pelosi single-handedly set in motion a series of events that will eventually lead to World War III and/or complete societal collapse with her little trip?

Did anyone give an actual reason?  Was she just trying to piss of China and sever any diplomatic ties for some unknown fucking reason? 

Or was it just a vanity project?  One last hurrah before they lower her into her sarcophagus?

Also, the trip apparently cost only a paltry $90 million.

I just can’t imagine the level of narcissism required to essentially tell everyone else on the planet to go fuck themselves so she can take a working vacation and get some press attention.  Could it possibly be statistically the single most sociopathic thing anyone has ever done?

Or am I just being an alarmist?

[somefucker]

Do you think jumping rope would help me get some pop back?

sure as hell didnt make my pop come back. he left when i was 10

[Logic]

If we have a concept of nothing then what happens when you die ? Theoretically nothing is actually something since it’s been defined. The concept of zero exists but as a place holder for absence of anything. But if you can define it ,is it still nothing?

Your take is pretty similar to Parmenides, whose line of reasoning was that to speak of something, it has to first exist.
Another way of looking at nothing has been equating it with consciousness, since consciousness by its very nature cannot be an object of consciousness thus it gets around Parmenides objection.
Personally I think it's similar to infinity, if it does indeed exist in some way then it would be incomprehensible to us anyway.

As for what happens when we die? Who knows.

[Atiba Applebum]

Expand Quote

Do you think jumping rope would help me get some pop back?

[close]

sure as hell didnt make my pop come back. he left when i was 10

Tie that jumping rope around his leg and tie the other to a table leg

[Banned from the room]

Expand Quote

Do you think jumping rope would help me get some pop back?

[close]

sure as hell didnt make my pop come back. he left when i was 10

Oh god. Lol

Haha.

I was just pondering about something being wrong with me. I just had a girl run up to me and try to pull me into a bar for some fun. DTF for sure. I got extremely anxious all of a sudden and said find me some other time.
She was bummed af and I felt like a pos for not going.

Damn. I’m sad again. Someone tell another joke.

[matt_2993]

Expand Quote

Expand Quote

Do you think jumping rope would help me get some pop back?

[close]

sure as hell didnt make my pop come back. he left when i was 10

[close]

Oh god. Lol

Haha.

I was just pondering about something being wrong with me. I just had a girl run up to me and try to pull me into a bar for some fun. DTF for sure. I got extremely anxious all of a sudden and said find me some other time.
She was bummed af and I felt like a pos for not going.

Damn. I’m sad again. Someone tell another joke.

What's the difference between a dirty bus stop and a lobster with fake tips?

Ones a crusty bus station and the other is a busty crustacean

[Frank]

cut a sliver of my skin off accidentally while doing prep work this morning that i couldn't locate amidst a see of onion slices. someone probably ate my skin. that thought freaked me out, even tho this has probably happened countless times.

[SneakySecrets]

What moment in time will future historians pinpoint as the beginning of the end of America?  The spark that ignited the eventual downward death spiral.  How far along are we?

[GardenSkater77]

What moment in time will future historians pinpoint as the beginning of the end of America?  The spark that ignited the eventual downward death spiral.  How far along are we?

It’s been all down hill post Vietnam/Watergate. I would point to the growth in income disparity that really started to take off in the 80s. The collapse of the auto industry (specifically the auto workers union) was a harbinger of things that followed. I remember being really affected by the movie Roger and Me. That was 89’ and things keep getting worse for the middle class.

This chart shows growth in consolidated wealth vs. union participation:



Did you have a date in mind?

[SneakySecrets]

I was actually thinking the 60’s as well, but I feel like arguments could be made for lots of other time periods as well.

For example, you could make a case that our involvement in (and profiting from) WWI was our first big break from being generally isolationist and the start of our constant global military intervention and empire building… something that was a boon in the short-term, but really changed our whole trajectory and planted a lot of seeds of destruction.

You could also make a case for the advent of cable news and social media, which now function as non-stop propaganda machines, causing political polarization and helping intensify our descent into the quagmire of identity politics.

There’s probably a hundred more that someone could justifiably point to.